Basic Tools for Affiliate Marketing

In this article we will take a look at some of the basic tools you will need to be successful with affiliate marketing. Just because you are not creating your own products you are still running a business and need to treat it as such.

Blog or Website

As a business owner you need to have a home base to run your affiliate business from. This should be a blog or website. It is very easy and affordable to set up a wordpress site for your business. While there are free options it is recommended to buy a domain name, your blog address, and use a hosting company, this is where your site runs from. The total cost for these two things is around $20 and the monthly fee for hosting is less than $10.

Autoresponder Service

As an affiliate marketer you do not want to waste your time sending people to the vendors offer. Instead the smarter practice is to direct them to the affiliate offer on your own blog. On your blog you will have an opt in form to capture the email addresses of your visitors. This provides you with the opportunity to mail your list for days, weeks and years to come.

Now, you may ask why this is important? Most affiliate marketers will tell you that most prospective buyers do not always make a purchase the first time they click on your affiliate link.

If you send these buyers directly to the vendors site and they don't purchase, you have lost the sale. How can you connect with them again and find out why they didn't purchase - you can't.

On the other hand if you send them to your blog and they opt-in to your list you have their contact information. You can easily send out emails to them and provide them with more information or ask why they didn't purchase.

You are collecting and building your own data base of leads for all your affiliate marketing efforts. While a person may not like one product they may happily purchase others.

Using an autoresponder services allows you to mass mail people at one time. Plus you can schedule emails to go out while you are at work or out shopping.

Two of the most popular autoresponder services are Aweber and GetResponse, both have introductory trials for the first month.

While there are other tools that can help your affiliate business these are the basic ones that you should start with. Then as you become an experienced affiliate you may want to use tools that create landing pages and track who clicks on your links and how often.

Best Practices for Successful Affiliate Marketers

Affiliate marketing is an extremely popular way to make money on line. It is not always that easy though and it is important to know how to become a good affiliate. Use the following guidelines to help you increase your income with affiliate marketing.

1. Take the time to research and know the products that you are recommending.

2. Writing product reviews and including both the pros and cons of a product will help you earn a good reputation as an affiliate marketer.

3. Don't sent your readers or traffic directly to a vendor's site, ensure you have a way to capture their email address. Do this by sending traffic to your blog, this way you can follow up with prospective buyers.

4. Only recommend good products, preferably ones that you have used yourself. Plus try to offer products at various price points and keep a look out for special offers that will benefit your readers.

5. Research good affiliate programs that offer a variety of products. Checkout commission rates, payout points, and their return policies and customer service response.

6. Don't be afraid to ask for higher commission rates and for a review copy of a product. As you send a vendor more sales it will be easier for you to get a better commission percentage.

7. Take the time to set up your own website or blog. This will help you brand yourself as a marketer and give you a platform to publish your reviews, information and tips on products on.

8. Don't try and set up multiple sites in various niches. You will find that you don't have the time to manage them all. It is better to start with one site and get that making an affiliate income before starting another one.

9. As you build your list and site offer your visitors free reports that provide valuable information in your niche. Inside the report you can add your affiliate links.

10. Research your product so you know the demographics of your prospective buyers. What they like, where they live, what their income and education levels are. This allows you to directly 'talk' with them on your blog. They will identify with you more easily and be more trusting to purchase from you.

Use these above best practices to form the basics of your affiliate marketing business. Remember that you want to earn the trust and respect of your readers first. Once this happens they will start to buy more regularly from you and you will get to a point where sales begin to happen on a daily basis.

Where to Find Affiliate Products to Promote

Now that you have decided to become an affiliate marketer it is time to go out and find products that you can promote. You certainly have a lot of choices and today we will cover some of the top sites that offer hundreds of available products.

Some of the top niches that affiliates promote include the money making arena such as Internet Marketing, health and exercise and the dating niches. These are huge topics and while there is nothing wrong with promoting them you will find that lots of other affiliates are doing the same thing.

Your best plan of action is to try and find what we call a sub niche of one of these main ones. Let's look at the health niche as an example.

Health - this can be divided down into:

·         Weight loss

·         Juicing

·         Diabetes

·         Allergies

·         Raw food

·         Stress

·         Anti aging

·         Pain Relief

The list just goes on and on. At least you should be getting the idea of smaller niches that you can promote products to. Staying with the health niche you could focus on Anti aging and seniors. This gives you a wide range of products that you could promote including joint pain and arthritis supplements etc.

To find actual products to promote you can use the following sites:

·         Clickbank

·         JV Zoo

·         Warrior Forum

·         Nanacast

These sites are great if you are looking for internet marketing products. If you do want to focus on health products here are a few suggestions.

·         Market Health

·         Sell Health

·         Amazon

Commission Junction is a huge site that lists lots of different products including health supplements, yoga, kettlebells, crafts and more. You can pretty much find an affiliate program for any topic you can think of.

Don't forget that many of the large retailers have their own affiliate programs. This includes Wal-Mart and Toys R Us amongst others. You can also search online for specific forums just use the following search string:

Niche or topic + affiliate programs

One thing to remember with many affiliate programs is that they may be country specific. This means that they may not accept affiliates if you live in a certain country. This is either because their products are not available in that country or they cannot pay foreign affiliates. Something to be aware of.

You now have lots of options of where to find affiliate programs and products that are suitable for you to promote.